


Lie back and think of England

by PaleBlueEis



Category: The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982), The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy
Genre: Background Het, Enemies, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, French Revolution, Guillotine, Hate Sex, Jealousy, M/M, Swordplay, Ties & Cravats, fake idiocy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaleBlueEis/pseuds/PaleBlueEis
Summary: Armand Paul Chauvelin had a problem, and it was Blakeney shaped. Foppish, golden, and disgustingly gorgeous, this idiot was marrying the love of Chauvelin’s life.
Relationships: Marguerite Blakeney/Percy Blakeney, Percy Blakeney/Armand Chauvelin
Comments: 27
Kudos: 23
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Lie back and think of England

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kainosite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/gifts).



> The request was for the 1982 film, which gives Chauvelin the first name Paul. Several of the Pimpernel novels give his name as Armand, so that's what is in the tags. I decided to go with "wait! they're both right! 
> 
> I also messed with the timelines a little, which is very in keeping with the film smooshing a couple of different novels together in a very sexy Ian McKellan and Anthony Andrews shaped package.

“Supper had been extremely gay.”

\-- _The Scarlet Pimpernel,_ by Baroness Orczy

Armand Paul Chauvelin had a problem, and it was Blakeney shaped. Foppish, golden, and disgustingly gorgeous, this idiot was marrying the love of Chauvelin’s life.

He couldn’t begin to understand it. Sir Percy Blakeney was everything both he and Marguerite had despised—together. When Chauvelin had had visiting privileges to the actress’s dressing room—and other privileges besides—the two of them used to put on aristocratic airs for each other’s amusement. Chauvelin would strut like the ridiculous rooster Sir Percy actually was, and Marguerite would simper and swoon like the vapid ladies who threw themselves at such gilded idiots. Then the two of them would fall all over each other laughing, and once they were all over each other anyway, it didn’t take much to convince Marguerite that they might just as well keep going.

So Chauvelin knew exactly where on Marguerite St Just’s neck she liked to be kissed and bitten, his hands knew the shape and weight of her breasts, and if he had never quite known her from the inside, he had—well, nibbled around the edges, so to speak. He knew her quiet, breathy sighs of pleasure, how she never seemed to quite get enough of him.

And now, he had to watch her marry a man—to use the term loosely—who had none of that knowledge, who gave few signs of knowledge of any kind, but who _did_ have a title, and a mansion, and a _quizzing_ _glass._

All of that was a problem, certainly. But the bigger part of Chauvelin’s Blakeney-shaped problem was…the shape of Blakeney. Which was maddeningly perfect. It was also primped, pressed, perfumed, and powdered, never a hair out of place, never a crease in his coat, and Chauvelin wanted to _muss him up._ He did not believe—did not believe for one moment—that Percy Blakeney, Baronet, would be capable of giving Marguerite pleasure, but he looked absolutely made for taking what Chauvelin could give.

Whatever he might say about Chauvelin’s “limp cravat.”

Sir Percy Blakeney was beautiful but empty, and Chauvelin wanted to _fill him up_. While his wife-to-be watched, preferably, so she could see who between her lovers deserved the name of man.

 _Why Paul, I do believe you’re jealous!_ The mocking tones of Marguerite’s musical voice, delivered as she was undressing, in _front_ of him, behind the thinnest of screens. It was unkind. Of _course_ he was jealous. Why wouldn’t he be? He was fast becoming one of the most powerful men in the Republic, it made sense that the jewel of the Paris stage would continue to be his. But even then, as he fingered the perfumed, beribboned letters not at all hidden in Marguerite’s desk and remembered fingering other folds, less perfumed but for the moment better hidden, he began to feel the possibility slip away.

Slip away as thoroughly, if not _quite_ as devastatingly, as that infernal Scarlet Pimpernel.

And so here he was, Paul Chauvelin, the Revolution’s most ruthless enforcer after the guillotine, Chief Agent of the Committee of Public Safety, spurned by an actress, tempted by a fop, and _owned_ by a phantom.

Thank—the Supreme Being, he supposed—that he would be catching one of them soon. Chauvelin himself would go to England, where he could sup with the aristocrats without the social awkwardness of beheading them. He was a Republican through and through, and genuinely loathed the world that allowed Sir Percy Blakeney and his _ilk_ to spend more on a cravat than it would take to feed an entire village for a year.

But that did not mean that Chauvelin was above enjoying the spoils of that unjust society at table and in the ballroom, in the service of the Republic, of course. He would dine with the aristos, keep his wits while they were in their cups and loose-lipped, and he was positive that among this company would also be the Scarlet Pimpernel. Soon enough, with a little leverage on his darling Marguerite (which her rash brother, intelligent as he was, would be certain to furnish in good time), he would have the Pimpernel himself at his mercy.

*

The dinner party was a drawn-out and unappetizing affair. In anticipating the culinary benefits of his current position (France was hungry, now—even agents of the Committee for Public Safety could not be seen to have food in excess, and hoarders were executed regularly), Chauvelin had failed to take into account that the food would be English, however plentiful. He didn’t like to complain, not while people were fighting over food in the Vendée and even on the streets of Paris, but he could not get his mind around an entire country that thought boiling sheep was an actual _cuisine._

No matter. At this dinner party were several well-heeled men that Chauvelin suspected of either of being the Scarlet Pimpernel or being in league with them. And then, of course, there was Sir Percy Blakeney, whom Chauvelin suspected of being brain-dead. Of all the assembled gentlemen still at table—the ladies had gone to the drawing room long since—the one Chauvelin would least like to hear from was the one who was speaking the loudest.

Chauvelin wanted to shut him up by biting the scar on his lip until it bled.

“They seek him—here!” Blakeney waved a white, smooth, almost feminine hand, illustrating the endless search for Chauvelin’s greatest foe. “They seek him—there! And I’ll be demmed if Chauvelin here doesn’t seek him—everywhere!”

The Prince of Wales was drunk as a fish and cut off his dearest friend (the only man alive that could make His Royal Highness seem intelligent) mid “poem” in order to voice his own theories about the “damned elusive Pimpernel.”

Except the Prince’s theories were less poetic than pornographic.

Marguerite’s intercession with this very Prince had ensured the representative of the Revolutionary Government was often welcome in his circles, and so His Royal Highness’s coarse humor was not news to Chauvelin. He despised it without being surprised in the least.

“Odd’s fish,” said the Prince. “I’ve heard that every single one of his band of merry men—oh, no that’s Robin Hood, innit?—I’ve heard every single one of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel will lay down his life for the man on a moment’s notice.”

Sir Andrew Ffoulkes allowed as he’d heard the same and definitely did not meet Chauvelin’s eye. Interesting. 

“I’ve also heard they’ll lay down for him in any way he wants,” snorted the Future King.

Uproarious laughter all around.

“I’ve heard that he demands absolute loyalty,” murmured Chauvelin, unable to completely keep the shiver from his voice, “and unquestioning obedience.”

“I’ll bet he does!” another drunken voice added.

“I’ll wager he’s buggering half his league and the other half wishes it were them,” a third chimed in.

“What makes you think,” said a sleepy voice, “that it isn’t the other way round?”

“ _The other way round?_ ” puzzled the Prince. “What the deuce do you mean, Percy?”

“Your Highness, if you don’t know, I’m afraid a demonstration is out of the question,” and Chauvelin would _swear_ Blakeney eyed him, fluttered his idiotic lashes, and smirked, before lowering his lids to their habitual half-closed position. “We don’t want to set a bad example for the young Republic across the Channel. What would people say if we spoiled the innocence of France!”

“I assure you, Sir Percy,” Chauvelin hissed through gritted teeth, “that I have not much innocence to spoil.” He thought he should perhaps receive a medal for the restraint he showed in _not_ adding, “just ask your wife.”

“Oh, it seems Monsewer Chauvelin is well-schooled in buggery, we need not worry.”

The entire table dissolved in laughter, but Percy continued. “What I mean is, plain as day, what makes you think half the league is not buggering the Pimpernel? Surely the poor fellow gets tired after saving all those heads and eluding the frog-eaters (beg pardon, Monsewer, for the _argot)_. Seems to me as if at the end of the day, he might like to lie back and think of England!”

Sir Andrew Ffoulkes looked as if he might like to crawl into a corner and die, Chauvelin noted, but he was unable to judge whether that made it more or less likely that he was the Pimpernel or a league member whose honor was being challenged.

With a tight smile, Chauvelin turned to Blakeney. “Surely you don’t mean to suggest that the Pimpernel is a—what do you call it? The female position?”

“The Molly Pimpernel!” choked the heir to the throne.

“Lud, man,” drawled Blakeney, gesturing with his eyeglass. “I’d say you can’t tell by looking. I know it’s not the fashion, but demmed if I don’t think the manly thing to do is to take what pleases, even if what pleases, is…taking.” He turned to Chauvelin. “But I understand shorter men tend to be sensitive to these issues. Beg pardon.”

“In fact,” he turned to face the company, “I think the jig may be up. Don’t want Chambertin here to think we were in earnest. He’s liable to find his way to a molly house to see what the fuss is about—investigating the culture for the Republic, of course—and find himself brought up on charges.” He turned back to Chauvelin. “Y’see, Monsewer, what we’re talkin’ about—what you Frenchies call the English vice, a case of the pot calling the kettle, according to your countryman the Marquis de Sade, black—is a capital offense in England. We wouldn’t want you losing your head over here. Lady Guillotine, I’ve heard, is a more jealous lover even than you!”

The table laughed, and the man to Chauvelin’s right, whom he was certain he’d never laid eyes on, slapped him between the shoulder blades, almost launching him into his port.

The Prince of Wales stood, and the rest of the men followed suit. “Yes, let’s rejoin the ladies and restore our reputations. You mustn’t mind us, Monsieur Chauvelin. We were only having a bit of fun.”

Chauvelin managed a tight smile. “Quite,” he said, seething.

“I’ll wager that Chauvelin here, underneath that somewhat dreary exterior, isn’t opposed to a bit of fun now and again.” On the way out, Blakeney let his quizzing glass glide over Chauvelin’s lapel and linger at his throat. “Odd’s my life, if this cravat isn’t nearly so limp as it was when first we met. I’d say it’s quite standing at attention.” He rapped ever so slightly on the material and, indirectly, on the throat beneath it. “Delighted to see you find England so invigorating.”

*

Lord Grenville’s ball was hot, crowded, noisy, and alive with the scent of seduction. Chauvelin walked the rooms, noting the corridors, corners, and rooms where assignations did and could take place. English coupling, however, was not his particular interest this evening.

It was nearing midnight, and the ball was in full swing, but Chauvelin had other plans than merriment. Marguerite—Chauvelin may not have had her, but he _had_ her now, in the palm of his hand, and it was almost as sweet—Marguerite, celebrated as the cleverest woman in Europe for a reason, had managed it all: read the Pimpernel’s note, betrayed her hero, and delivered him to her former lover, now her enemy.

So Chauvelin was on his way to the supper-room to meet the meddlesome Englishman that was the scourge of his existence.

The supper room was deserted and debauched. Half-empty glasses, greasy supper plates not yet cleared, stained and rumpled table linens. The food left on the table at such a ball was more than a family in the South of France might see in a month—a reminder to Chauvelin of the righteousness of his cause.

The spilled wine and toppled chairs told stories of a more tawdry kind.

Chauvelin wandered the farcical scene of his elaborate trap, deep in thought and anticipation of his coming victory. The Pimpernel was in his grasp, at last.

Except.

Except that no one came. And yet, as Chauvelin was soon to see, he was not alone. If he began to suspect he was on a fool’s errand, it was only partly because the fool was here already.

Sir Percy Blakeney was snoring on a sofa in front of him, relaxed, long-and loose-limbed, shining, and gorgeous. Even in sleep, his trousers were smooth-fitting as gloves, Chauvelin couldn’t help but notice. It was so easy to admire him when he wasn’t talking. He looked peaceful.

He looked _edible._

A smile, almost of pity, played on Chauvelin’s lips, softening the hard lines of his face. This vapid fool had no idea of the intrigue his wife was involved in, no idea of the power Chauvelin had over her, how Chauvelin could avenge every taunt he’d suffered at this idiot’s hands.

No idea how much Chauvelin wanted to turn him over on that sofa and fuck him even more senseless than he was right now.

Midnight came and went. Chauvelin settled into a chair with a good view of both the door and Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet.

When Chauvelin awoke, he was alone. His cravat was undone, his neck exposed, and in his hand was a small piece of paper bearing only the image of a tiny red flower.

*

Chauvelin’s cravat was more than undone. It was largely _gone._ This was because he’d just had the experience of being undressed at swordpoint, _by_ swordpoint, in front of a fairly large group of people, including the former love of his life.

He was, he supposed, humiliated. But he was also, more than anything, aroused beyond reason.

That was awkward, considering he was both humiliated and aroused by the…well, the same two men who had been humiliating and arousing him for months now, who against all odds turned out to be the same person.

This person had just slammed Chauvelin over a table and removed Chauvelin’s jacket with his fucking sword. Chauvelin was breathing _hard,_ but so was Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet and Pimpernel, and Chauvelin—whose innocence really did not need protecting—knew enough to know that his opponent wasn’t only breathless from the exercise. The thrusting, pulsing exercise.

Seeing Sir Percy Blakeney in shirtsleeves was practically seeing him naked, but it was Chauvelin who was coming undone.

Now, with the point of a sword at his exposed throat. Annnd he was begging for it. “Come on, finish it off,” Chauvelin pleaded, “kill me or let me come,” he didn’t add. But it was heavily implied.

“I always like to give a man,” Sir Percy drawled, and then paused. Eloquently. “A fighting chance.”

“So that’s what they’re calling it these days,” muttered Chauvelin under his breath. No one could hear who wasn’t thrusting into his throat with…a sword.

“You stay there,” said the Scarlet Pimpernel, low and gravely. “We have some business to attend to, if I’m not mistaken.”

Chauvelin stayed where he was, half-undressed on a castle floor. He was vaguely aware that he’d been outsmarted, again, that he’d lost the Dauphin, that there’d be hell to pay—possibly with his head—when he got back to Paris. But he was having trouble thinking past the present moment.

He watched as Percy escorted his wife and friends out of the room with instructions (variously) to pass as Chauvelin to his waiting soldiers or take Marguerite (who?) to wait for her husband on his fucking yacht. “I’ll get more out of Chauvelin if I have him alone for a moment. There’s too much at stake.”

“But Percy!” said Marguerite, trembling, “you underestimate him.”

“Lud, m’dear. I suppose I’ll find that out. But I’ll wager I’ll be back with you before you know it, with some very valuable knowledge on top of it.”

And then they were alone. Chauvelin’s soldiers, of course, were tied up in the next room, but castle walls were thick.

So, Chauvelin had noticed during their swordplay, was the menace that Blakeney kept in his skin-tight trousers.

The man himself was now towering over him, still panting. “Sink me, but don’t you look a sight, your throat all bare, your cravat shredded to pieces. And look, someone’s gone and cut off all your buttons. What are you good for, Frenchman?”

There was a genuine question in his eye, Chauvelin couldn’t help but notice—stupid English honor, he supposed—so Chauvelin answered it. “Let’s find out.”

Percy grabbed Chauvelin’s torn linen shirt and hauled him to his knees. “I like the look of you like this, Chauvelin. You look undone. You look debauched, and I haven’t even started on you yet.”

“Oh, you have,” Chauvelin muttered, “and you know it. We started on each other months ago. And you look entirely too buttoned up.”

“Fix that.”

Chauvelin didn’t need to be told twice. Still on his knees on the cold stone floor, shaking with desire, he undid Sir Percy Blakeney’s flies. He held him loosely in his hand and watched Blakeney watch him with those half-closed eyes. “You underestimate me,” Chauvelin murmured.

“I know better, actually. You keep me on my toes.” whispered the Scarlet Pimpernel. “We’re still enemies, you know. We’ll be enemies even after you suck me.”

“We’ll be enemies _while_ I’m sucking you. But I have a condition.”

“Not sure you’re in the position to be bargaining, Frenchman.”

“On the contrary.” Chauvelin stroked _incredibly_ gently, circling as precisely and delicately and dangerously as a sword might circle a shirt button. “You want to fuck a mouth, and I have one.”

“You do have a point there, Monsieur,” drawled Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet, but his voice was not quite as lazy as usual. He reached down and caressed Chauvelin’s jaw, tracing his finger down his neck. “And I do like this throat, had to have a look at it in a supper room, once.”

“So it seemed. Now. If I do this,” Chauvelin was speaking low and breathy and directly into Sir Percy’s cock, “then you’ll let me,” and Chauvelin trailed his hands behind his legs and squeezed, “do what I want with you.”

“If what you want involves having me on that table, you have yourself a bargain. But why trust me?” His hand trailed over Chauvelin’s jaw again and traced down his throat before grasping it and holding on.

“Give me your word. You’re a self-described man of honor.” Chauvelin went back to tracing feather-light patterns all over the straining cock in front of him. He breathed into it, hovering.

“For God’s sake, you have my word, for—” but the rest of whatever he’d been going to say was drowned out in a string of decidedly uncensored swearing.

Chauvelin supposed he was humiliated, but at the moment he Did. Not. Care. Because the Scarlet Pimpernel was grabbing him by the hair and moaning and trembling and Chauvelin did not feel humiliated. He felt, at last, powerful.

He felt powerful as he hummed and sucked and opened his throat and let the Scarlet Pimpernel spill into him.

He also felt powerful when he told that taunting fop to lie back and think of England, when he got to live the dream of biting that teasing scar on his lip and, at long last, filling Sir Percy Blakeney with something besides idiocy. While, at the same time, having the elusive Pimpernel over a table to his heart’s content and fucking the both of them until their genius and their stupidity merged together in a torrent of unintelligible and very filthy nonsense. 

Afterwards, Chauvelin’s only regret was that Marguerite had not been there to see it.

“Are you in love with your wife?” Chauvelin asked, as he did up his shirt as best he could.

“I am,” said Sir Percy, shrugging on his coat. “Are you?”

“Not so much any more,” said Chauvelin, realizing it was true. “How do you know I won’t tell her about this?”

“Be my guest,” Percy drawled. “She’ll probably tell you about her understudy.”

“ _Her brother’s_ lover?”

“Well. Not at the time. But you see how it is. If _you’d_ had Marguerite _,_ I’d be throwing myself on that sword, and there will never, ever be another woman who could so much as turn my head. Swordplay is a different and unrelated matter. Now, sir. I don’t want to have to bother myself about rescuing you, of all people, from the guillotine. Think how awkward. So here’s what.”

Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet, pulled a paper from his inside coat pocket and handed it over to Chauvelin. “It’s a plan, all laid out. We tend to have several going at any given time—to confuse spies, you understand. Take this back to your demmed Committee and tell them how you thwarted me.”

Chauvelin smiled a bit dourly. “Is that what they’re calling it now,” he repeated.

“Look, don’t think I’ve forgotten that you are a cold-hearted, bloodthirsty zealot who wanted to marry my wife and regularly tries to kill me and my friends and often succeeds. Don’t let this go to your head. Next time I see you, I’ll be trying to stop you, and I’ll win.” As Sir Percy said all this, however, he was busy doing up Chauvelin’s much-beleaguered cravat to some semblance of its former self, which somewhat undercut the threat. “For all that you fuck like a racehorse, m’dear.”

“And for all that you are too gorgeous to exist, you are a pointless aristocrat who lives off the labor of others, wastes more food on a daily basis than people are fighting each other for all over my country, and only rescues other aristocrats despite the fact that they’re only eight percent of the traitors we’re dispatching.”

Sir Percy Blakeney looked taken aback. “Only eight percent?”

Chauvelin nodded, buttoning his coat over his torn shirt.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” the Scarlet Pimpernel said slowly. “I’ll have to start rescuing commoners now—no doubt some of the same ones you’re worried about starving. Don’t want to cheat Madame Guillotine, I s’ppose. So here.” He dug in his pocket and came up with a purse. “Get them some food, then, so that they can live to die another day.”

And with that, Sir Percy Blakeney strolled out the door as if nothing had happened to make strolling at all uncomfortable. Chauvelin, not for the first time, marveled at his enemy’s power of dissembling.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for the great prompt and the opportunity to revisit this world. I was so in love with these characters and actors when I was about 13. I even did research on Anthony Andrews at my local library and learned he enjoyed painting pictures of clowns, which strangely was not enough to cool my ardor.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


End file.
